


but the petal-soft blade

by mapped



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Campaign 01 Season 02: Fantasy High Sophomore Year (Dimension 20), F/M, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:28:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24542374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: Gorgug and Ragh get matching tattoos on the Leviathan. Zelda thinks it's sweet.
Relationships: Ragh Barkrock/Gorgug Thistlespring, Zelda Donovan/Gorgug Thistlespring
Comments: 49
Kudos: 193





	but the petal-soft blade

**Author's Note:**

> For an anon on tumblr who requested Ragh/Gorgug + Gorgug/Zelda! :)

Gorgug is very drunk and it seems very important that Ragh gets the same tattoo as him right now. Not the tin flower—that has personal meaning to Gorgug and wouldn’t make any sense on Ragh—but the Zajiri runes. He is too drunk to remember what they actually mean, but Garthy explained them to him just a few minutes ago, and he’s sure they’re worth having on his skin permanently. And on Ragh’s skin, too.

He’s trying to persuade Ragh, gripping the sleeve of Ragh’s Owlbears jacket and tugging. “Garthy says it’s a—celebration! A party! No, wait. It’s not a party. But it _is_ a celebration. Of our orcly— _orcish_ heritage. We’re both half-orcs! Look!” He takes Ragh’s hand, and he holds it up in the air. Spreads his palm open and presses it flat against Ragh’s. Ragh’s is much bigger and meatier, but they’re both the same shade of green. Gorgug stares for a second, forgetting where he was going with this, and then mumbles, “High five.”

“Uh.”

Their hands are still pressed together. Gorgug slots his fingers between Ragh’s. It feels like the natural thing to do. Not weird at all. “C’mon, Ragh. Wouldn’t it be cool to celebrate our orcish heritage _together_?”

Ragh’s eyes are so dark and wide, like the Celestine Sea at night. “Yeah, uh, that would be cool. Fuck yeah, half-orc friends for life, dude!” His fingers lock with Gorgug’s, and he smiles shyly, a sight which makes Gorgug feel even unsteadier than he already did. It’s like he’s on a ship. Which he is. But everything inside him keeps tipping from side to side.

Gorgug shakes his head a little, which doesn’t help much. He looks up at the halfling woman giving him a tattoo and tells her that Ragh wants the same Zajiri runes, in the same location. She waves at a colleague to come over, a dwarf with an astonishing number of piercings—and that’s only counting the ones that are visible through all that facial hair. Ragh offers his left arm instead of his right, because his right hand is still holding Gorgug’s, and the dwarf gets to work.

Gorgug wasn’t really feeling the pain, anyway, thanks to the mead, but now all he can feel is Ragh’s hand in his. He’s so warm, also thanks to the mead, but Ragh’s hand is a tiny sun of heat.

Neither of them let go. Ragh squeezes a bit tight, sometimes, but Gorgug doesn’t mind. It’s nice. Time swirls around them in a funny way, like the universe is spiralling out from the secret cocoon between his hand and Ragh’s.

Then the tattoos are done. They might have been sitting there for a week, or a month, or less than a second.

Ragh blinks at their arms, now with matching bands of Zajiri script inked forever in black. “That flower is fuckin’ cute, dude.”

“Oh, thanks.” Gorgug’s head is a bit clearer now. Maybe the tattoos hurt more than he realized. His arm does feel sore, now. Or maybe it’s the—apparently barrelled?—water that Ragh and Fabian got him to drink. He remains suspicious of the water. “My parents gave me a tin flower on the first day of school because they thought it would help me make friends, and I guess in a weird way, it kinda did? Well, I tried to give it to Fabian and he punched me, but it all worked out in the end somehow. So I guess this tattoo is just to remind me that it’s worth trying to be kind and open with people even if sometimes it does get you punched? Does that make sense?”

“Hell yeah, I know exactly what you mean, dude. Like I told Dayne about my feelings and he punched me but then you guys killed him and I got kissed at prom! You kissed me! And now I have friends who actually care about me!” Ragh beams, yanking at Gorgug’s arm excitedly, because they’re _still_ holding hands. “That’s so sick, you getting a tattoo of that flower. That’s really fuckin’ meaningful. You gotta put your heart on the line even if it means you might get hurt, dude. Because closing yourself off and not showing people who you really are? That’s what hurts most of all. You’re so fuckin’ wise.”

Maybe a tin flower tattoo _would_ make sense on Ragh, after all. “Uh, yeah. Thanks. You’re wise, too. You’re really wise.”

It’s weird, isn’t it, that he and Ragh kissed nearly a year ago at prom, and then it never happened again. He thinks about it sometimes. It’s like one of those bright spotlights when he’s on stage performing, when his drumbeat and heartbeat are one and the same, and he looks up and all he can see is white blazing across his vision. That’s what the kiss felt like. Something so dazzling he still has to squint against the memory of it. Just a white bloom of light, floating above everything else that happened that night. The dragonfire erupting across the gymnasium, the blood dripping down over his eyes.

Yeah, he thinks about it sometimes.

But Zelda.

Zelda.

He’s sad again, and no matter how much metal he listens to, when he’s sad it’s still always to the upbeat mental soundtrack of his parents playing the ukulele and the harp and singing a song to cheer him up. If only he’d remembered about the generator, he could take a photo of his new tattoos and send it to Zelda.

“Do you think Zelda will like the tattoos?” he asks Ragh.

“Oh”—Ragh drops Gorgug’s hand, running his own hand over his short crop of black hair—“hell yeah, of course she’s gonna! There’s no way she won’t go fuckin’ nuts over them, dude. Those tattoos look sick on you.”

“Oh. Well. Thanks. I hope so. If she ever forgives me for skipping town without sorting out my crystal signal.” Gorgug slumps down further in his seat. It’s only been a few days, but he misses Zelda so much. He wants to go upstairs to the suite Fabian’s paid for and crawl into a bed and put a pillow over his head and his headphones over his ears until his whole world is Zelda’s playlist. Just the deep, inky pulse of her favorite songs.

“Dude, she loves you.” Ragh’s voice is as soft as one of the many blankets in the Hang Van. Honestly, Gorgug thinks he could just sleep in the Hang Van every night. Even when they go back to Elmville he wishes he could carry on sleeping in one of its cozy piles of blankets, hearing some of his friends snoring nearby, and others whispering and giggling over stupid jokes. “She’s gonna forgive you. I know it.”

Gorgug leans into Ragh, feeling reassured just by the texture of Ragh’s voice, something he can wrap himself in and relax under. “The tattoo looks really good on you, too.”

“Oh, uh, yeah? You think so?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Gorgug glances sideways at Ragh, and his heart tumbles, aching like a skinned knee, or like a fresh tattoo which hears its echo coming from someone else’s body. It’s just that Ragh is so burly but bashful at the same time. Gorgug vaguely remembers Ragh calling himself ugly, a moment before Gorgug kissed him at prom. He hopes Ragh doesn’t believe that anymore. Suddenly it seems vital that Ragh knows that’s not true. “You always look really good.”

Ragh’s cheeks flush, and Gorgug thinks about what it would mean to hold a tin flower out to him. But then all he can think about is Zelda, and Zelda eating an entire rose on their first date because she was so nervous she couldn’t even give him the rose she brought for him. He needs to get back to Elmville first. Get back to her, and tell her he’s sorry, and then maybe—maybe in the future, there can be other flowers.

Right now, they just all have to focus on getting through another night without anyone dying.

* * *

Miraculously, they all make it back from the Forest of the Nightmare King in one piece, and now that everything with him and Zelda is going well— _really_ well—he peruses the Binder that his parents gave him a lot more than he would be willing to admit. It’s very useful.

He and Zelda are cuddling in her bedroom, and she’s tracing the tattoos on his arm, as she often does, sometimes with intent, sometimes absent-mindedly. “I’ve kind of always wanted a tattoo. But I just don’t know what I would get.” She does that slight laugh that she has, a little embarrassed puff of air, which is the most endearing sound ever. Kind of the audio equivalent of a baby bird opening its wings and flying for the first time. “Like, maybe I would get one of my favorite lyrics? But I don’t know if I could just pick one, you know? ’Cuz, like, obviously every song on the playlist I gave you means so much to me, right, or I wouldn’t have put them on the playlist.”

“Obviously.” Gorgug nods.

“So, like, what does this say, anyway? Did you tell me already? ’Cuz I don’t think you did, or um, maybe you did—I’m sorry if you did and I forgot.” 

She’s drawing over the Zajiri runes with a fingertip. Gorgug realizes that all that information slipped his drunken brain and he never bothered to find out again. “Uh, no, don’t apologize. I don’t think I told you. I don’t actually know what it says.” He could probably ask Adaine to do some of her magic and read it for him. 

“Oh, um, right. I bet it says something super cool.” Zelda smiles, and kisses the underside of his jaw. “I think it’s really sweet that you and Ragh both got this tattoo. Even if, like, you don’t know what it means.”

Gorgug thinks about the polyamory section in the Binder. He knows about Jawbone and Sandra Lynn being poly now, because Fig talks about it a lot, but the Binder was helpful in giving him concrete advice instead of what he can glean from Fig’s wild ramblings, which can’t be trusted half the time because Fig’s imagination is just as active as the Nightmare King’s was. It’s good that she lives more in truth than in fiction these days, thanks to Ayda, but still. For actual pointers about polyamory it’s definitely better to rely on the Binder.

“About that,” he says, combing his fingers through her hair. “Do you think? Um. Hmm. What would you think if I told you that I, um, might like Ragh? As in, have a crush on him?”

Zelda stiffens in his arms. “Oh. Um. Do you? Have a crush on Ragh?”

He holds his hand still as well, awkwardly tangled in her hair. “Well, yeah. Maybe. Kinda. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I do.”

“Okay. And like, you still love me, right?”

“Yes! I love you. You make me so happy, Zelda, and I wanna be with you. But I just… you know, I’ve maybe had feelings about Ragh for a while now, but I care about you so much, and you’re so wonderful, and I thought my feelings for Ragh would go away, but it’s been a year. And they haven’t yet. So. I don’t know. I guess I thought I’d at least ask you. To see what you think about it. If you would maybe be okay with me trying to see where things can go with Ragh? But I’m not gonna do anything if you’re not okay with it. I just, I wanna be with you no matter what.” He peers at her, trying to gauge her reaction, but her bangs obscure her face almost completely.

But she isn’t silent for as long as he expected she might be. “That’s actually like, so funny. ’Cuz, um, I never told you this, but it’s kind of. The norm for followers of the god of wine and ecstasy to like, be polyamorous? But it’s just that I always thought I didn’t really want to do that ’cuz… I don’t know, I feel weird about all this stuff that’s like, the ‘ritual conventions’”—she does the air quotes and Gorgug senses the eye roll through the veil of her bangs—“of the followers of Faunus, or like, traditions for my family, or whatever. Like, you know, that whole thing with my sixteenth birthday was just like, wow, I wish I could’ve just had a chill time instead of a rager, you know? So I didn’t tell you about the whole polyamory thing. And anyway, I was kind of like, super insecure, and this was all so new and scary for me. Like, dating one person is terrifying enough, right?”

“Right.” Gorgug agrees wholeheartedly. He sweeps her bangs aside. “It was really terrifying to ask you out but I’m glad I did it.”

They smile at each other. Tin flower and rose. “Yeah, I’m super glad you did it too.” Zelda isn’t so tense anymore, the full weight of her head falling back onto Gorgug’s chest.

He goes back to trailing his hand through her hair. “So, what do you think about it now?”

“Um, well, I guess after spring break everything feels different. ’Cuz like, I was super anxious before when you left Elmville without saying goodbye, but like, I _know_ that we both have other things going on in our lives and we’re adventurers, right, so we gotta go save the world and make sure our friends don’t die! I don’t think that really properly sank in until I went on my spring break project with the Maidens, ’cuz like, you and the Bad Kids have way more adventuring experience than everybody else, so I didn’t really know what that was like, till then. It means the world to me that you went to all that effort to sort out that thing with the satellite even with everything else that was going on. You’re, like, incredible, Gorgug.”

“Oh, thanks. You are too.”

Zelda squirms a little, burying her face in the crook of his neck. “Um, okay, thanks. So are you. Wait—no—I already said that. I said it to you first. What I meant to say was, if you wanna date Ragh, then that would be cool with me. I trust you.” 

He presses a kiss into her hair. “I love you,” he says again.

It was weird, the first time he said it, when he was on his crystal calling Zelda from the town outside the Nightmare King’s Forest. There was that time he watched Fabian eat a bunch of glass shards and cry and then Ragh said he _also_ ate glass all the time, like it was an absolutely normal thing to do, so later on Gorgug secretly tried to eat glass—just a tiny bit—and it was horrible. Even just having the glass in his mouth was horrible. He spat it out before he could bite down on it. That was what saying _I love you_ to Zelda felt like, the first time. Like glass in his mouth. He was so worried he was going to say it and it would be wrong, somehow, because a lot of the things he says turn out to be wrong, and getting this one thing wrong would be really, really bad. Like, what if Zelda was saying it to him as a joke, or she had been dared by her friends to say it, or worse, this was a nightmare, an illusion, and he hadn’t actually managed to make his crystal work at all?

But the more Zelda said it to him, and the more he said it to Zelda, the more he realized it wasn’t glass in his mouth: it was one of those see-through sheets of sugar, made to _look_ like glass. If he held it for long enough on his tongue, if he took his time over each word instead of rushing to get it all out, it didn’t hurt him, but instead melted away to pure sweetness.

He likes saying it now. Likes how it feels truer and truer every time he says it. Likes how it makes Zelda glow.

* * *

He’s on his back and Ragh has him pinned to the ground. A familiar position, really, for them. Gorgug has been grappled by Ragh too many times to count, by now; it’s practically half their friendship, at this point.

They’re only sparring, and Zelda is not far off, sprawled across the grass and panting. They’re in the garden of her house, as they often are. It’s a big garden, plenty of space for them to throw each other around when they all go into a rage. Plenty of space for Zelda’s family to fling themselves around in religious ecstasy.

Ragh’s face is so close, like this, and Ragh’s weight on him is firm and heavy and _comfortable_ , a weight that his body remembers well. It used to scream danger but now it only spells safety.

He doesn’t want to get out of the grapple. He doesn’t want to shove Ragh off. He just wants to stay here, in the cage of Ragh’s thick arms.

“I give up,” he says.

“Bro, you’re not even trying.” Ragh shakes his head and collapses at Gorgug’s side.

Gorgug looks at him. He’s mopping the sweat from his brow. A lick of hair sticks to his forehead. It’s cute. Gorgug reaches out and draws his thumb across Ragh’s tattoo, which is visible because Ragh is wearing a tank top, whereas Gorgug still has his hoodie on. Ragh’s face is already dark with color from all the exertion, but the flicker of his eyes tells Gorgug what he needs to know, which is that Ragh likes Gorgug touching him. 

“I finally asked Adaine what this says. It didn’t seem great to me to keep walking around with a tattoo if I have no idea what it means.”

“What does it say.” Ragh’s voice is so low and rough it doesn’t come out sounding like a question, as Gorgug keeps letting his thumb play back and forth over the ink on Ragh’s skin.

“Apparently it says, _Be not the knife-sharp leaf but the petal-soft blade_ ,” Gorgug recites, in a solemn, lofty tone, the way Adaine had said it.

Ragh ponders this for a moment, scratching his head, and then it’s like a light bulb goes off—no, _explodes_ —behind his eyes. “Oh, dude, that fuckin’ rules! It doesn’t sound like fuckin’ anything at first but then you think about it and you’re like, _wow_. That’s some meaningful shit right there.” He jabs at the air with a finger, emphatically. “It’s like, you shouldn’t _look_ like something nice but be actually horrible, you know?”

“Yeah, orc heaven was weird. I wish it was full of petal-soft blades instead of the other way round.”

“I think people find us half-orcs really scary and it’s so hard for us to make friends but we can be soft, dude! We _should_ be soft! There’s nothing wrong with being soft!”

“Being soft is good.” Gorgug slides his hand up to rest on Ragh’s shoulder. “I, uh. Zelda and I have been talking, and uh.” God, he thought he was being so smooth, and now he’s struggling with simple speech again. “I told Zelda that uh, I really like you, so, uh. Zelda said it would be okay if—if you want—we could try dating? If you want. I don’t know, is this something you would want?”

Ragh stares at him for a long time. He seems to have a lot more trouble processing this than what the tattoo means.

At some point, Zelda has scooched over to Gorgug. She whispers to him, “Gorgug. Um. Do you want me to leave, maybe? Would that help?”

“No, I. Please stay.” He takes Zelda’s hand. It makes him feel stronger. “Ragh. You know how Jawbone and Sandra Lynn are in a relationship but Sandra Lynn is also, uh, dating your mom? It would be like that.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ragh says, at last. “My mom seems really happy. Are you two being serious about this? It’s not a joke? Because that would suck, dude.”

“It’s not a joke.” Gorgug brushes his knuckles along Ragh’s cheek, just lightly. “We’re serious. Right, Zelda?”

“Right. You and Gorgug seem like you would be super great together. Like, I always thought that if it turned out that Gorgug wasn’t actually into me or whatever, I would want him to be with you, you know? Um, is that a really weird thing for me to say?” Zelda frowns at herself.

“What, no. That’s not weird,” Gorgug says. “That’s. Awesome. That’s really awesome. But I am really into you.” He brings her hand up to his lips and kisses the back of it, and she blushes. He kisses her cheek, too, for good measure, before turning back to Ragh. “And I am, uh, also really into you, Ragh. So. What do you think?”

Ragh has been avoiding Gorgug’s eyes, but now he meets Gorgug’s gaze, and he makes Gorgug think of those nights on the Celestine Sea again, just that breathtaking expanse of water in every direction, and so much unknown ahead. Drifting between one solid thing and the next. Terrifying, yes, but exciting, too.

“Can I kiss you?” Ragh asks. “Is that okay?”

 _Yeah,_ Gorgug thinks, before realizing that he hasn’t actually said it out loud, because his voice has sunk somewhere fathomless into that sea in Ragh’s eyes, and it takes effort to drag it back out. “Yeah,” he tries again.

Ragh kisses him, and it’s like. The first kick of the beat of the first song on Zelda’s playlist. Or his crystal lighting up when he powered it on after spending all night sweating away, working to connect it to the satellite, and it flooded with messages all at once, Zelda’s name filling his screen. He keeps thinking about Zelda because it’s the only reference he has for this dizzying feeling that he knows as love.

Ragh’s hands grasp at the front of his hoodie to pull him closer, and Ragh’s mouth is soft and warm and eager, and Gorgug feels so good, weightless and spinning through space.

And what makes it even better is that Zelda’s right there with him, and he can feel her nuzzling his neck, smiling against his skin.

“Been wanting to do that for a really long time,” Ragh murmurs, when he breaks the kiss, and he strokes Gorgug’s lip with his thumb, pressing a little against the point of Gorgug’s tusk like he’s testing its sharpness. “God, I like you so much. You’re so fuckin’ hot.”

“Right?” Zelda says, her arm snaking around Gorgug’s chest.

Gorgug has a sudden vision of the two of them fighting over him. Since he started dating Zelda he’s come to appreciate why she enjoys it so much when he flips out. Watching Zelda and Ragh spar is honestly overwhelming for him sometimes. But as hot as the idea of them fighting over him is, he much prefers this reality where they all get along, and he can lie here between the two of them, peaceful and drowsy in the sun. He used to feel too big for his own life—a clumsy giant trying his best not to break everything in his way, with all this anger in him growing as he grew, both him and his anger too enormous for anyone to hold.

But now his life feels much bigger than him. There are people in it who can hold him so well. There are things he knows how to mend and not break. There are paths to a happiness far, far larger than his anger.

“You’re both really hot, too,” he says, grinning.

* * *

He stares at himself in the mirror. Behind him, Zelda laughs, jumping up to tousle his hair. “You look super cute. What are you gonna do anyway, change into a different hoodie?”

“I don’t know.” He tugs at his one strand of silver hair, self-consciously. “I just feel like I’m missing something. Are you sure you don’t wanna come along?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. You and Ragh should have a proper first date without me. Anyway, I’m gonna use this time to make the two of you a playlist.”

“Oh, wow? That’s awesome. I can’t wait to hear it.” Gorgug glances at his pitiful wardrobe. Zelda’s right. What _is_ he gonna do? He only has like two hoodies which kind of look the same.

This is just as well, because he hears his mom yelling that Ragh is here. Patting the back of his head where Zelda messed up his hair, he turns, intending to kiss her goodbye, but she takes a rose out from the pocket of her hoodie and presents it to him. It’s a little crumpled from being in a pocket, but it’s red and beautiful, nonetheless.

“Here. This is what you’re missing.” She smiles.

“Oh, cool! This is great!” He takes the rose, thinking about putting it in his own hoodie pocket, but he decides against it. Better to just hold it until he can give it to Ragh downstairs. “This is exactly what I’m missing. Thank you.” He kisses her, hugging her tight, drawing out the kiss as long as he can.

“Just like, don’t eat the rose, okay?” Zelda warns as he pulls away.

He chuckles, remembering their extremely awkward but wonderful first date. “I definitely won’t!”

He goes downstairs, where his parents are chattering away at Ragh, who is standing sheepishly in a nice tank top with a picture of a sunflower on it and answering their questions politely. God, why does Ragh insist on wearing tank tops all the time? Can’t he just wear hoodies like Gorgug and Zelda? Doesn’t he know what his _arms_ look like? Gorgug is hopelessly distracted already.

“Uh, hi, Ragh.” He holds out the flower. “This is for you.”

“Holy shit, dude,” Ragh says, and then claps his hands over his mouth. “Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Thistlespring, I didn’t mean to swear. I mean. Wow, Gorgug. No one’s ever given me a flower before.” He looks close to tears as he accepts the flower and inhales its scent. “I’m sorry I didn’t think to get you one.”

“But you did,” Gorgug says, pressing his palm to the sunflower on Ragh’s tank top, as much for the simple pleasure of touching Ragh as anything, trying valiantly to ignore his parents who are failing to hide their joy at the fact that they are getting to watch their son set off on a first date.

“Huh, I guess I kinda did! I’ll get you a real flower next time though, promise.”

“Be the petal-soft blade, right?” Gorgug asks, taking Ragh’s free hand to lead him out of the front door together.

“Hell yeah, dude, be the petal-soft blade!” Ragh shouts.

It’s kind of their new thing, like _Hoot growl_ , or _Spring break, I believe in you_ , except this one’s just for the two of them. Just their little half-orc thing, knowing how the world sees them and what they want to be despite that. They’ve both got the tattoos to match, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> ETA: Check out [this incredible art based on this fic](https://bazemayonnaise.tumblr.com/post/620303683193815040/garthy-says-its-acelebration-a-party-no) that my friend Nemo made!
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments are much loved <3 Please come find me on tumblr [@reluming](http://reluming.tumblr.com)!


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